


Envenomate

by taylor_tut



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Fever, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Poisoning, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Sick Character, Sick Jaskier | Dandelion, Sickfic, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23255605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: Jaskier is stung by a venomous beast which, after its head is cut off, will search for its head, albeit slowly, for days before it finally dies. At first, they don't know that the wound is anything more than a cut, but as his condition, both physical and mental, begins to decline with hallucinations, fever, and pain, they will have to push him to his limit because they can't stop, lest they be killed by the beast.
Comments: 32
Kudos: 315





	1. Chapter 1

Jaskier doesn’t even register that he’d been stung by the monster that Geralt is wrangling dangerously close to where he was standing, trying to keep to the side and out of the fray, because at very nearly the same moment, Geralt’s sword is knocked from his hands and goes clanging across the cave floor with the grating sound of metal on rock. 

“I’ve got it!” he shouts, because Gerlat is too busy now just keeping alive as he fights off teeth and claws with his bare hands to go chasing after his sword. Vaguely, Jaskier realizes that this game of fetch might not do well for trying to break away from the recent image that many townspeople had built up in their minds in which Jaskier acted like the Witcher’s puppy, following him obediently rather than traveling along of his own accord, but he didn’t have time to entertain the thought for long. Fear, even as often as he pushes it down to work through it nowadays, briefly makes him feel hot and nauseous as he rushes across the cave’s floor, past the monster without even sparing it a glance, and his head sort of rushes when he leans down to pick up the weapon. 

While he wants just to slide it along the ground to Geralt, his hands are busy with the beast, and Jaskier realizes that he will have to distract the beast just to give Geralt a fighting chance at grabbing the sword to run it through. 

“I’ve got it!” he repeats as loudly and obnoxiously as possible, sprinting ahead straight toward the scene like he’s blissfully unaware of the danger there. “Don’t worry; I have it!” 

“Jaskier,” Geralt growls scoldingly. It’s not surprising he’s unhappy—he’s never happy—but Jaskier hopes he at least knows that this is more or less a calculated move, or at least a strong choice, rather than true ignorance. When the beast’s eyes focus on Jaskier for a second, he has no choice but to swing. 

“Fuck!” Geralt shouts, angrily this time as he dodges a very, very near-miss with the sword. Jaskier blinks a few times, trying to sort out what had just happened. He could have sworn that he’d been aiming for the beast, and then… then there had been two of them, each as clear and vivid as the other, and he’d barely even registered it before he had to pick one as his target. 

Apparently he’d guessed wrong, and he was sure he’d hear more on that later, because Geralt did not sound pleased. 

Oh, well. He’d never been one to thrive under pressure. 

In a truly humiliating display of prioritizing, Geralt spends a moment of his precious focus and energy shoving Jaskier roughly away from the battle before he turns back to the beast. It’s stiflingly hot, now, despite that he knows the cave is dank and cold. He loses himself in thoughts, he supposes, which are not even important enough to keep track of as by the time Geralt returns to his side, covered in foul-smelling blood and panting hard, he wouldn’t have been able to tell him what he’d been thinking about if he’d asked. 

Luckily, Geralt never cares that much. 

“Move,” Geralt commands, one hand roughly steering him out of the cave. “Quickly.” 

Jaskier, puzzled, gestures to the head even while walking in the direction pushed. “But you’ve killed it,” he points out. Geralt huffs an irritable sigh. 

“Takes more than this to kill it,” he says. “It will search for its head for three days before it finally dies. FASTER.” 

Just before they round the corner out of the cave and the light of the sun blinds him momentarily, Jaskier spares a glance behind him at the monster. She’s collapsed, her bird-like body and long neck leading to nothing draped inelegantly over a pile of rocks, but she’s twitching, then writhing, and finally staggering to her skinny, taloned feet. 

The head in Geralt’s hands looks alarmingly human, but grotesquely longer. He’s holding it by thin, wispy, black hair, and the pale, horribly gaunt face is set in an expression of neural horror. Jaskier wishes that Geralt might close the grey, lashless eyes to stop them staring into his soul, but if he asks, Geralt will only make fun of him. 

Geralt is leading the way back to Roach, a fact for which Jaskier is grateful, as he feels sort of floaty, disconcertingly light. It’s as if his body isn’t his and his thoughts are being harvested from the air as he walks; he’s hitting clouds of ideas like walking into a swarm of gnats, there and urgent in and for only a moment at a time before it’s as if they had not existed at all. 

“The beast is slow,” Geralt explains, “but relentless. It needs no rest, no food, no water.” 

Jaskier pales. “Then, how will we evade it?” 

They reach Roach and Geralt begins to unfasten a large jar, one which looks like it was made for this, from her saddlebag with unbothered haste, moving quickly and efficiently without seeming panicked. 

“We must keep the head from her until she dies,” he replies. “So long as we get some distance, we should be fine.” 

After unscrewing the jar’s lid, he puts the head inside and closes it up, then refastens the whole thing to the saddlebag once more. 

“On the horse,” Geralt barks at Jaskier, cutting off any questions or annoying elated remarks by lifting him up to her back before swinging up himself. “The first few hours are critical. We’ll get farther faster on Roach.” 

Jaskier isn’t about to say anything that might ruin this, so he just lets Geralt command her forward without a word. After the battle, he’s feeling exhausted and fatigued, so the break is welcome. He imagines that it won’t be for long, since Roach can’t run very quickly carrying this much weight without frequent rests, but he’ll enjoy it while it lasts. Since he knows that Geralt cannot afford to punish him by forcing him from Roach’s back to walk like usual, he allows himself to lean into Gerlat’s chest a bit to relieve the pain in his shoulders and low back. Geralt must be feeling either merciful or too irritable to even say anything of it, so they ride like that for quite a distance. 

It’s not terribly long before Geralt, ever perceptive to his horse’s needs, slows her to a stop in a clearing not far from the river. Jaskier realizes that he’d been zoned out for much of the ride, though he has the impression he’s been talking as well, but doesn’t really question it when Geralt roughly urges him off the horse and onto the ground, where his knees cave for a mere moment, forcing him to lean against Roach. He’s not used to riding, he supposes, and it takes more energy than he’d have thought it would. 

A small part of him is happy that they’re not going to be resting for long, because it means there’s not much preparation to do. All that can really be accomplished is refilling their waterskins and tending to Roach, so he doesn’t have to bother with setting up bedrolls or building a fire. Geralt must see the exhaustion in his face because he doesn’t have to do anything more than flash a pair of puppy-eyes before he looks the other way to begin taking care of Roach and not giving Jaskier a hard time about sinking to the ground with his back against a tree to rest his eyes for just a moment. 

He only realizes that he’s fallen asleep when Geralt throws a near-empty waterskin into his lap. Jaskier startles hard, choking on his breath, and groans as he fully comes to consciousness.

“If now is a good time,” Geralt says sardonically, “we need to get moving. You should fetch water.” Jaskier nods. When he stands, his limbs are heavy and a bit sore, none more so than his arm with the cut. He shakes his head to try to clear it, but can’t quite rid himself of the inertia of sleep which makes his eyes feel gritty and his head pound. Blinking away the slight dizziness that makes the edges of Geralt’s form blend with the trees for just a moment, he stretches and outstretches a hand. 

“Do you need water, too?” he asks. Geralt shakes his head. 

“Already refilled mine,” he replies. Typical, Jaskier thinks, that Geralt would make the effort of going all the way to the river and not take thirty extra seconds to fill Jaskier’s water, too. 

“Right; of course, you have,” he mutters. “I’ll be back.” 

The walk to the river’s edge isn’t a long one, and the terrain is flat but muddy. Normally, he’d be complaining aloud just to himself, because it makes him feel a little better just to get it out even if no one is listening, but now, that seems like too much effort. 

He’s crouched in front of the river on his knees, his waterskin nearly full, when it happens. First, the hairs on his arms stand on end, then, he looks up to the wood on the other side of the river, and the order of these events is crucial, he will come to see. An electric chill skitters up his spine from the base to his neck, and when he shivers, his eyes meet the horrible, hunched-over figure of the beast they’d just fought hours before, looking even more hideous than even it had when they’d left it. Its feathers (fur?) are soaked in blood, thick and viscous enough that it mats them together and has them sticking up in weird places, and its posture is so pained that he can’t help but wonder if the head, still in Geralt’s special, macabre little basket, is screaming. 

He barely remembers to pick up his waterskin as he sprints away from the water and back toward Geralt and Roach. 

“Geralt!” he shouts, borderline screams, as soon as he can see him from a distance. “Geralt!” 

“What happened?” Geralt demands. He runs so fast into him that his stop is clumsy, leaving Geralt to have to do a nervous little half-grab-half-spin to help him slow down without falling. 

“The beast,” he pants, distantly thinking that a run that short shouldn’t have left him this out of breath. He blames panic once more. “It’s caught up to us.” 

“Shit,” Geralt curses. He takes Jaskier’s waterskin, now only three fourths full from all the water that had sloshed out while running, and caps it for him, then puts it over Jaskier’s body as if he knows or cares that Jaskier’s hands are shaking too hard to do it himself. He swings onto Roach’s back, then helps Jaskier up quickly and easily, like he weighs nothing at all. Jaskier’s mind goes numb once more to the beat of Roach’s hooves and the coolness of Geralt’s armor against his cheek. 

This time, he thinks he actually falls asleep, but he can’t be sure, and since he managed to stay on the horse without hitting the ground, he doesn’t much care. Because of this, he’s not quite sure how long he rides for, but even still, he’s grateful when they stop again. All this riding is really beginning to make his lower back throb. 

Geralt helps him to the ground this time, possibly because he’s aware of just how heavily Jaskier’s been leaning on him for the duration of the ride. If he’s concerned, he doesn’t mention it. 

“Roach made good time,” he says instead, “since you noticed the beast before it had a chance to get to us.” That, he knows, is a compliment, but one he is not meant to take any credit for. He might be having a difficult time sorting his own thoughts, but Geralt’s mannerisms, he could read in his sleep. 

“So, we’ve got some time to rest, then?” he verifies. Geralt hums an affirmative reply, and Jaskier’s shoulders relax in relief. His arm has really started to burn, so much so that he cannot ignore it anymore, and he wants to bandage it. 

“I’ve got some business to attend,” Geralt announces, and Jaskier can’t help but roll his eyes. 

“What business could you have in the middle of a forest?”

“Hm,” he shrugs. Brooding, then. Possibly foraging, but more likely brooding. He won’t interrupt. 

“Have fun with that,” Jaskier says, and wrestles down his bag from where it’s secured to Roach’s saddle. “‘I’ll be here.” 

Geralt is already retreating into the forest, so Jaskier wastes no time setting himself in a comfortable place, his back pressed against another tree. The weather is nice enough that it doesn’t matter whether he’s in the sun or the shade because he’s comfortable either way, but being in the direct light is beginning to aggravate his headache, so he’s glad to have a bit of reprieve provided by the leaves. It allows him to focus a bit more on his arm. 

For all its complaining, the wound looks superficial. It’s long-since stopped bleeding and was never deep in the first place, but the area around it looks red and bruised, which he supposes explains the discomfort. If he had more energy, he’d grind up some herbs to ease the pain or to disinfect it, just to be safe, but he’s feeling the pull of sleep once more and knows that he may not be able to resist it again, so he opts instead for just wrapping a bandage around the affected area a few times, keeping it loose enough so it won’t cut off his circulation but tight enough that he gets a little relief from the compression. 

Once more, waking with a sharp gasp is the only thing that alerts him that he’s even fallen asleep. Looking up to find what startled him, he sees Geralt’s boot: he’s not only fallen asleep, but he’s fallen over completely, his cheek pressed to the grass. Geralt kneels down to his level before he has a chance to force himself up and offers a hand to help him sit upright. 

“Alright?” he asks, as close as he’s willing to get to concern. Jaskier nods. 

“Not sure why I’m so tired,” he replies, and Geralt shrugs. 

“It’s been a long day,” he replies. “A long few days.” 

“I suppose it has.” 

He gestures to the bandage, concerningly not even fully applied. “Something I should know about?” 

“It’s nothing, really,” Jaskier admits. “A small cut, but it still smarts a bit.” 

“Can I see?” 

“Be my guest.” Jaskier offers his arm to Geralt, who undoes the progress he’s made on bandaging the wound to look at it. He turns his arm in his large hands, brushes against the red swelling with one thumb while Jaskier forces himself not to wince at the pressure. Seemingly satisfied, Geralt mercifully reapplies the bandage, finishing the job in no time at all and with a tighter, more even compression than Jaskier had been able to achieve one-handed. 

“Thanks,” Jaskier says, and Geralt ignores it. 

“We should get going again,” he announces instead. How long had Jaskier been asleep? Though he doesn’t want to move—no, something inside is TELLING him not to move—, he bites back the complaints and gets to his feet, tapping his face in an attempt to wake himself up and to chase away the irrational but gnawing sense of foreboding that shouts somewhere in the back of his mind. 

“Lead the way,” Jaskier says, and Geralt does. 


	2. Chapter 2

Geralt looks at the sky like he can read it, then to the trail ahead, then, with eyes which soften like the first snow to fall upon still-warm ground, to Roach. She’s tired, and though Jaskier is, too, possibly more so, he knows to whom Geralt is going to afford more mercy. 

“We’ve gotten ahead of the beast,” he declares. It’s the part of the evening where the sun goes from high in the sky to below the hills in no time at all, and it’s already beginning to darken. “There’s no need to sprint anymore, with the lead we have. We’ll go on foot for a while.”

Jaskier isn’t being asked and his honest answer would be “no” if he were, but he nods anyway. Apparently, Geralt has been keeping better track of where they’re going and where they’ve been than Jaskier has, as he does not hesitate before setting off in a direction, taking Roach’s reins and assuming that Jaskier is behind him which, of course, he is. His legs are leaden-heavy with the sort of pain-adjacent exhaustion that he would normally associate with either a dead sprint uphill or a long day of walking, but not a relatively leisurely ride on horseback. Vaguely, that worries him, but he shoves the thoughts to the back of his mind and convinces himself that he’s just not used to riding and perhaps it strains muscles that he doesn’t otherwise exercise. 

He follows. 

He’s followed. 

Unable to know what’s ahead or what’s behind is making him feel antsy in a way that isn’t easy to sing about. He usually spends these long walks thinking of lyrics and trying them out loud, deciding what to keep and cut based on Geralt’s reactions (if it’s flowery enough to make Geralt roll his eyes, it’s sure to turn the head of a romantic soul in a tavern with nothing better to do than spend an evening kissing), but right now, he’s glad for the silence. It’s better for hearing anything that might be sneaking up behind them. 

Geralt notices. 

“Nothing to sing about today?”

Jaskier shrugs. “I thought it might be best not to draw unnecessary attention,” he replies a bit snappishly, “seeing as we’re being pursued by an angry monster, and all.” 

“No need,” Geralt uncharacteristically corrects—he must miss the music, even if he’d never admit it, to give Jaskier a reassurance like this. “The beast knows exactly where her head is; she’s not tracking us.” 

Jaskier frowns, stumbles over his feet a little. “Is that supposed to be comforting?”

“No,” Geralt says honestly. Right. Of course it’s not: Geralt couldn’t care less how he’s feeling. 

For a while, they just walk. Jaskier has been called loose-lipped before, but how he’s feeling now is different. His mouth feels clumsy, his jaw nearly numb, and he barely registers the words he’s saying. Really, though he’d never want Geralt to know this, he wishes he could stop talking, because he’s not making any sense. He normally has a rebuttal when Geralt accuses him of rambling, but right now, he’s just lucky that it hasn’t come up yet. He went on about the weather for a while, some nonsense about spring and flowers and finally being able to sleep without waking up chilled a dozen times a night. Geralt didn’t care. In fact, he was probably becoming irritated at the prattle. 

It’s not until he catches himself in the middle of a speech about how much he’d like to leave the chaos that he realizes that he truly DOESN’T have any control over what he’s saying, because what he says is, “but so long as you keep throwing yourself in danger, I’ll endure it.” 

Geralt doesn’t so much as look up, though he can see the tension in his shoulders. 

That’s the first time Jaskier begins to think that perhaps he’s more than just a little tired. 

“Just once,” he weakly tries to deflect, “it might be nice to do battle with a monster that lives on a lovely, quaint beach somewhere.” 

Heat colors his cheeks red. He didn’t want to tell Geralt all that. They’re his most private thoughts, or among them, anyway, and while the door is unlocked for Geralt to know them, he’s never knocked, so Jaskier has never opened it. 

By the time they stop again, Jaskier’s mouth is dry. He realizes that he’s drunk all his water in a short time, a fact which is made more surprising by the fact that he’s shivering cold. With the sun now set, the temperature has dropped dramatically, and he finds himself aware of the fact that it had gone from too hot to too cold without so much as an hour of comfortable in-between.

“We can take another rest,” Geralt declares. Jaskier nods and lets his tired legs give out right where he’s standing, collapsing into the dirt exhaustedly. 

“I need to get more water,” he groans, and Geralt rolls his eyes before passing over his own half-full waterskin. Jaskier drinks from it without hesitation. 

“I’m going to fish,” he says. “I’ll fill your pouch while I’m by the water.” 

Jaskier nods again. “Thank you,” he says warmly. “I’ll get firewood.” 

Geralt yanks the waterskin back before Jaskier is quite done with it, but he makes no further complaint than an indignant squawk as he hands it over. It’s more effort than he wants to exert to force himself to his feet again, and when he does, for a moment, he almost wishes he’d asked Geralt to leave the water because everything spins wildly around him. He presses one hand to his temple in an attempt to make it stop; his blinking flutters like he might faint, but he remains standing. Distantly, he recognizes that if he just explains to Geralt that he’d nearly blacked out, that he won’t be angry with him if he returns to find that there is no fire ready to cook their dinner, but he doesn’t want to disappoint him, which he feels like he’s constantly doing. 

If it takes the last of his remaining strength, he’ll gather enough wood to last for their short rest. 

He’s not sure how long he’s gone. Time tends to blur together in the evenings like this, without shadows to track for reference. His own fatigue levels are a poor gauge of the passage of time, considering he’s already so tired that he can barely put one foot in front of another. 

He’s got a few logs in his arms already, very nearly enough to at least make a small cooking fire that will do nothing to chase the chill from his bones, when his skin crawls once more with an increasingly familiar sense of dread. He shivers once, hard, from the spine outward, then looks up at the space behind a tree he could have SWORN he was JUST looking at, and he sees it: a pale, now sinewy body, more hunched than last time, and now dripping with something dark purple and thickly wet. 

“Oh, Gods,” he breathes to himself, feeling his stomach threaten to turn at the sight. “Geralt!” 

He runs. A senseless sort of energy gives him the power to sprint ahead blindly back in the direction he’d come from, and when he gets there, he once more runs into Geralt, but this time, it’s his back. Geralt barely moves and Jaskier bounces off him and into the hard dirt. 

“What the hell are you—”

“The beast!” Jaskier howls. “It’s back!” 

This time, he’s met with skepticism. “There’s no way it’s caught up to us yet,” he denies. His tone is somewhere between calm and warning. 

“But I saw it!” 

“Jaskier,” he sighs. “I know you’re tired of walking, but you can’t lie to me just to ride Roach again.”

Blinking at the accusation, Jaskier tries to calm down enough to rebut it rationally. “I… You’re sure?” 

Geralt nods. “We’re too far ahead of it. It’s impossible.” 

Jaskier breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth in an attempt to get that reassurance to solidify in his mind. “It’s in my head,” he says, more to himself than to Geralt. “There was nothing there.”

Geralt must think something is offputting about his demeanor, whether that’s the panic or how easily he is swayed to believe that it’s a figment of his imagination and panic that’s conjuring visions, because he steps forward softly. 

“You seem,” he notes, “peaky.” Jaskier shivers, swallows back nausea, and shrugs. “How is your arm?” 

Telling, Geralt seems to find it, that he instinctively guards it close to his body once it’s mentioned. 

“It still burns a bit,” he admits. “But it’s not… I’m just not feeling so well. In general.”

“I’d like to take another look at it.” Geralt sits him down on the ground and gently, smoothly unbandages the arm. As soon as it’s in his grasp, he frowns. “You’re clammy,” he mutters under his breath disapprovingly.

Jaskier isn’t prepared to see the wound. A small patch of redness that they’d both written off as a forming bruise had widened and swelled, so far down his arm that it’s difficult to even move his wrist even without the tight bandage. Even his knuckles are beginning to get warm and red, and it all seems to be stemming from branching red tendrils of infection coming from the cut. 

Geralt curses. “Did it sting you?” Jaskier blinks a few times, long enough to answer the question that it is sort of an answer in itself. 

“What?” He hesitates, pressing numb lips together. “No,” he replies, “no, I don’t think so.” 

“You don’t think so, or it didn’t?” 

“I would have felt it!” Geralt huffs a breath through his nose. 

“You were distracted,” he points out, giving Jaskier’s pain tolerance more credit than Jaskier would have thought. “You might have mistaken a sting for a cut.” He outstretches his fingers and balls them back into a fist a few times, feeling the tenderness and swelling that supports that theory before Geralt takes his hand roughly. 

“Stop that,” he commands. “You’ll only spread the venom.” 

"Sorry,” Jaskier apologizes. Geralt doesn’t comment on that. 

“I should have known when I first saw the wound,” he chastises himself. “Should have just treated it like a sting for safety’s sake. The venom has had hours… Fuck. The monster you’ve been seeing.” 

That makes the hair on Jaskier’s arms stand on end. “What about it?” 

“Hallucinations,” he explains, “are not uncommon with the venom. Usually with the onset of fever.” Jaskier presses his own hand to his forehead curiously and shrugs, not really feeling any heat but supposing that he is wrong about that when Geralt smacks his hand away and presses his own very cool palm to the skin with a grimace. Cursing again under his breath, he looks around the empty forest with wild, serious eyes. 

“We can’t stay here for long,” he finally decides. “We need to get as much distance now while you’re still on your feet. We’ve got to keep running.” 

Jaskier nods, steeling himself for another long walk, but Geralt instead helps him onto Roach’s back once more. He packs the fish in their bag, in response to which Jaskier wrinkles his nose in distaste. 

“Can you ride without falling?” he asks. Jaskier rolls his eyes. 

“I’m not that weak,” he replies, trying and failing to keep the annoyance from his tone. The irritability, he knows, is a symptom: normally, he’d be nothing but thankful that Geralt was showing him some concern, elated that he was allowing him to ride Roach. However, as things stand, the worry comes across as condescending. 

Geralt probably could tell, but he doesn’t address the uncharacteristic bite to his voice, and just hums in response before urging Roach ahead and jogging alongside her. 


	3. Chapter 3

Jaskier is fading in and out of consciousness on Roach’s back. Where he’d previously been riding behind Geralt, that had only lasted until he’d gone limp and nearly cracked his head open on the ground falling off. Had he not made a little moaning sound as he’d passed out, Geralt might not have caught him in time. Now, he’s riding in front, collapsed in Geralt’s arms and too far gone to enjoy it. Geralt can’t even bring himself to find it uncomfortably intimate despite that he can feel Jaskier’s prey-quick heartbeat against his own chest. 

“Jaskier,” he prods, mostly because it’s been about fifteen minutes since he’s last heard him speak and the desire to let him get some much-needed rest loses out to the fear he’s gone permanently catatonic every quarter of an hour or so. “Tell me how you’re doing.” 

Jaskier huffs an irritable breath through his nose. “Tired,” he snaps. 

Alright, Geralt decides; that’s good enough for now. He’ll try again in a little while. Jaskier seems to be experiencing panic and euphoria in waves of equal frequency, but right now, it’s punctuated by an intermittent rush of anger and drowsiness. That’s normal, Geralt tells himself, and means he’s not so far gone he needs to risk stopping for a healer just yet. 

“Well, you need to stay awake,” he commands. “Otherwise you’ll fall.” Geralt won’t let that happen, but he’d prefer Jaskier remains conscious, anyway. 

“My head’s pounding,” he complains. 

“There’s nothing we can do about that, now.” 

“Can’t I sleep?” 

Geralt sighs, finally feeling himself beginning to cave. “Drink first,” he compromises, reaching around Jaskier’s body for his water pouch and coaxing Roach to a momentary stop so Jaskier can take a few sips. He does so hungrily, swallowing loudly and with the vigor of a man who’d been wandering the desert for weeks. “Slowly, Jaskier; don’t—”

He’s interrupted by a horrible gagging sound from Jaskier’s throat, and he just barely has time to angle him away from Roach before the water comes up in miserable, moaning retches. 

“Sorry,” Jaskier gasps between ragged breaths, his voice thin and wavering almost like he’s in tears. The panic must be setting in again. Fuck. “Sorry, Geralt; I’m sorry.” 

“Enough of that,” Geralt says, and while it’s meant to be comforting, the genuine anger he feels at the mere idea that Jaskier would be apologizing for something so beyond his control gives the statement a bite that has Jaskier wincing. 

They ride for a long time. Geralt’s Witcher senses allowed him to sense the fever long before it was obvious to the touch, but by the time they stop again, he’s so hot in his arms that Geralt is uncomfortably warm just by proximity. Still, Jaskier is shivering fit to shake apart, which he knows means that the fever is rising. 

Eventually, as the sun is going down, Geralt is satisfied once more by their lead and decides to pull Roach off into a mossy clearing for a rest. Jaskier is surprisingly lucid as he helps him down, barely even taking his hand to ease him off the back of the horse, but the strength is short-lived, as he stumbles into the shade of a tree and collapses against it. 

All Geralt can do is wrap a blanket tightly around him, so tightly he can hardly move, and build a fire. 

They have nothing to cook, so he plucks a few mushrooms and empties his waterskin into a put, which he places in the fire, and tosses them into it. It hardly qualifies as a soup broth, but anything he might be able to convince Jaskier to choke down is better than nothing. He tosses in a few pieces of salted, cured meat and some small onions that Jaskier had insisted on plucking from the ground a few days ago, just for flavor. And while he’s certainly no cook, he doesn’t think it smells half bad. 

Jaskier, the whole time, is plagued with nightmares in his restless sleep. Likely some combination of the fever and psychoactive properties of the venom itself, the dreams appear to be vivid, violent, as he’s moaning and thrashing even in unconsciousness. He places a much more tender, caring hand on Jaskier’s forehead now that he’s not conscious enough to register the gesture and finds the skin hot and dry, as if he’s dehydrated even though he’s been drinking from the waterskin like he’s got a demon in his belly that he’s trying to drown. 

It’s bad, and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. Just yesterday, Jaskier had been walking and talking, jovial and alert. 

He’s none of those things, now. 

If he didn’t know the beast’s nature, he might assume that Jaskier had been replaced by a doppelganger who looks and speaks like the real thing but isn’t HIS Jaskier. He would have bet money on the notion that Jaskier couldn’t be this quiet and still. 

Geralt soaks a cloth in cool water from their pouch and begins to drag it up and down Jaskier’s face and neck. He undoes a few buttons from his shirt and swipes the rag there, too, not even slowing when Jaskier begins to shiver--he can’t let himself focus on Jaskier’s physical comfort right now, not when he’s so feverish that this isn’t even waking him up. 

He knows, from experience, that this is just a phase: he’ll be alternating between this sedation and a sort of manic restlessness for the next several hours, between muscles so limp that he won’t even be able to hold his head up and muscles so tight that he might break ribs, between being totally catatonic and being so hyper-vigilant that his mind will invent things because the forest won’t be enough to keep him stimulated. 

He isn’t sure which will be worse, but he can’t help but hope this part doesn’t last much longer. Even if Jaskier is dead on his feet, at least he’ll be running.

He can tell he’s having nightmares, but he doesn’t have the energy to wake from them. Geralt smooths the troubled creases in his forehead, then lets his large, muscular thumb come to rest at Jaskier’s temple, where he applies a gentle pressure that he hopes will soothe the headache and maybe take the edge off the dreams. 

He’s not patient; he can’t afford to be. 

“Jaskier,” he prompts after letting him rest for what he deems is an appropriate amount of time but which is actually quite short, in the scheme of things. He makes a little moaning noise as he stirs. “Look at me. What’s my name?” 

Jaskier blinks alert like he’s trying to see through smoke and frowns. “Why do you need me to tell you that?” 

“I need to know that you’re lucid,” he explains, “so answer the question.” 

“Geralt—”

“And the name of my horse?” 

“How far gone would I have to be to forget Roach?” 

“That’s the point,” he agrees. “And what,” he asks, gesturing to the horrible jar, now so full of opaque, foul-looking liquid that the contents are not visible, “is in there?” 

Jaskier shudders. “A head.” 

That seems to satisfy him and Geralt lets a bit of tension slip from his shoulders. “There are herbs that can help you. They grow around here, but when the beast’s head is near, they wither. I’ll have to go ahead alone to retrieve them.” 

Even in his borderline delirium, that upsets Jaskier. 

“You’d leave me behind?” he questions incredulously, in a voice so fearful that Geralt feels his chest constrict. 

“I can’t bring you along in this state.” 

Jaskeir struggles to free himself from the blanket, but his arms are swaddled so tightly that it’s next to impossible. 

“Roach is staying here to watch over you,” he says, and that seems to be enough to calm Jaskier down even in his agitated state. “I will come back. Very soon. Just rest.” 

Geralt isn’t really sure if Jaskier has relaxed or simply passed out again, but he doesn’t have the time to wonder. In an ideal world, he’d be able to set up camp for the night, allowing Jaskier to rest his aching body and throbbing head, to keep vigil with a cool, wet cloth until the fever broke, maybe even get to a healer if things took a turn for the worse. 

But Geralt so rarely gets what he wants. 

There are few herbs that can treat the venom. While it’s not typically deadly, as the beast only eats live prey, they don’t have time to wait it out and let him recover, and the fever and delirium are designed to be incapacitating even to men three times Jaskier’s constitution. 

He grabs plants and herbs blindly, shoving them into his cloth bag without even bothering to identify them first--he can figure out that bit later. For now, all he cares about is gettin back as quickly as possible. After filling his bag with what are mostly nontoxic, if not actually medicinal, herbs, it’s so dark out that even Geralt’s heightened Witcher vision can’t make out what he’s looking at. Perhaps he’s not fully convinced anything in his bag will actually help, but it’s worth a try, anyway. 

He’s very near the camp when he smells a painfully familiar scent in the air: panic; the human pheromones that trigger fight or flight. 

And so he runs. 


End file.
